


grace gets so far and too hard to swallow

by heartwasalegend



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 23:59:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartwasalegend/pseuds/heartwasalegend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's unfortunate that her knowledge of the house is so limited because she’s standing on their front lawn, with a handful of driveway pebbles and not a single idea where she should be throwing them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	grace gets so far and too hard to swallow

She’s never actually been to Quinn’s house. As much as they’ve been tiptoeing around a real friendship for months now, the only way she recognizes the imposing mansion on Dudley Road is because Finn used to stare daggers at it whenever they drove past. Finally she snapped and asked him what it was about the house that made him so angry, and he somewhat sheepishly told her that it belonged to the Fabrays. 

It’s unfortunate that her knowledge of the house is so limited because she’s standing on their front lawn, with a handful of driveway pebbles, and not a single idea where she should be throwing them. She should probably figure that out fast, because this looks like the kind of neighborhood where people would be alarmed to see a seventeen-year-old girl in a wedding gown standing barefoot on their neighbors yard.

There are three upstairs windows glaring down at her, and there’s not much to do at this point but take a wild guess. She shifts one stone into her throwing arm and rears back – 

“What are you doing?”

Rachel is so startled that her feet slip on the damp grass and she only barely catches herself in time to avoid falling.

Quinn is standing on her front steps, the door swung wide behind her. 

Rachel lets the remaining pebbles slip from her hands and straightens her shoulders.

“You didn’t come to my wedding,” she says, mustering up as much bluster as one can in a grass and mud stained wedding gown.

Quinn stares at her evenly and shrugs her shoulders lightly. “From what I hear you didn’t stay long yourself,” she replies. “What are you doing here Rachel? Everyone’s looking for you.”

Rachel lets out a slightly hysterical laugh and shakes her head.

“I’m – I just thought that – “ she says. “It’s stupid.”

It’s _so_ stupid, because if anything, their entire relationship has been built on Rachel expecting more from Quinn than Quinn thinks she’s capable of delivering on.

Quinn watches her silently for a few tense moments before saying, “You might as well come in before you scare the neighbors,” she tilts her head in the direction of the house next door. “Mrs. Turner is always up all night trying to catch her husband sneaking out to see his mistress.”

Rachel steps forward, follows Quinn into the house. “How do you know that?”

Quinn shoots an unreadable look over her shoulder before heading for the stairs. “My mom told me. Apparently AA meetings are very informative.”

Rachel has no idea what to do with any of that information so she doesn’t respond, just trips up the stairs behind Quinn and follows her into a bedroom on the right. Quinn hits the lights and Rachel’s eyes immediately flutter shut at the sudden brightness. When they adjust she casts a glance around the room, instinctively cataloguing as many details as she possibly can. She’s standing in _Quinn Fabray’s_ bedroom. If this weren’t already one of the single strangest days of her life, just that detail would be enough to set her head spinning.

“Do you want to get out of that?”

Rachel’s head jerks towards Quinn, who’s standing at her dresser.

“What?” Rachel croaks.

“Your dress,” Quinn gestures vaguely. “I can lend you something to wear.”

Rachel looks down at her body and takes in the state of her gown. It’s covered in dirt and slashes of green, so much darker and extensive then she’d been able to see in the dim streetlight. There’s a wide tear near the bottom and beneath that her feet are filthy and damp from dew. She left her shoes in the church parking lot and lost her veil ducking through some hedges not long after.

She’d had this image in her head, of one day watching her daughter walk down the aisle in this dress and that’s – 

Well that’s never going to happen for a lot of reasons and Rachel’s chest constricts so powerfully that she can’t get out a single word to answer Quinn. She just nods and, mercifully, Quinn turns away and starts rummaging through her drawers while Rachel tries to collect herself.

A minute later Quinn hands her a pile of clothing and sort of steers Rachel into the adjoining bathroom. Rachel stands mutely in the middle of the room, staring down at the streaks of mud her feet are leaving along the white tile while Quinn turns on the shower.

“There’s towels in the cabinet under the sink,” she says calmly. “Shampoo, soap – whatever – is all in there.”

With that she turns on her heel and goes. After the door clicks shut behind Quinn, it takes Rachel almost a full minute to get her hands to stop shaking enough to tug down the zipper on the side of her dress. It slips down her body and crumples to the floor, looking very much beyond salvaging. She folds it neatly anyways, and sets it on the lid of the toilet. As she’s doing so she catches sight of herself in the mirror above the sink. 

Her hair is a mess and she’s bleeding, just a little, from a tiny cut on her cheek that she has no memory of sustaining. There’s something broken and hollow about her smeared makeup and the dark spaces beneath her eyes. She’s wearing a bra and underwear set that Santana helped her pick out. It’s skimpy and lacy and nothing at all like what she’s used to but it was meant to be a surprise for Finn. She’s seen the magazines he keeps hidden in a shoe box under his bed and – 

She thought that maybe he’d like it if she looked just a little bit more like one of those girls. 

She slips out of the lingerie and dumps it into the garbage can at her feet because she knows now that she isn’t that kind of girl. Couldn’t even really fake it. She’s also apparently not the kind of girl who could marry Finn today.

As she stares herself down in the mirror she wonders when the kind of girl she is stopped being someone she even recognizes.

 

 

She emerges from the bathroom dressed in a pair of Cheerios sweats and a soft, worn sweater with the words “Belleville Middle School” printed across the front. Quinn’s curled on her bed reading a book by the light of her bedside lamp. She glances up when Rachel walks in, marks her page and sets the book aside.

“I called Kurt,” she says. “He said he’d make sure your dads know you’re okay and that you won’t be home tonight.”

Rachel swallows thickly and nods. They all must be so, so disappointed in her. 

Quinn pulls the covers back on the opposite side of the bed. “Come on, you should get some sleep. Tomorrow’s probably gonna be a big day.”

Rachel crosses the room and gingerly slips under the duvet, leaving as much space as possible between Quinn and herself. Quinn rolls her eyes before reaching for the light. Rachel feels a little better once the room is dark. A little less like she’s trying to navigate a completely foreign territory.

It’s quiet for what feels like an eternity, but must only be a few minutes, when Rachel finally loses the ability to keep her racing thoughts to herself.

“Did you know?”

Quinn shifts next to her. “Know what?”

“That I wouldn’t be able to go through with it,” Rachel says, voice trembling.

Quinn sighs. “I didn’t think you’d let it get as far as you did. I thought you’d have stopped things much sooner.”

“I – “ Rachel’s eyes fill up with silent tears, “I love him.”

Quinn doesn’t say a thing.

“I love Finn,” Rachel repeats.

After a long loaded silence, Quinn says, “I thought I loved Finn once. But the more I think about it now I – “ she clears her throat, “I just loved the way he kissed me after winning a big game and – I loved how we looked walking down the hallway together and I loved the way that he sometimes looked at me like – like I was someone who was worth looking at. But I didn’t love _him_ – not really.”

Rachel sniffles softly. “What are you getting at?”

“Maybe you do love Finn,” Quinn whispers. “But maybe you just love the way his voice sounds when he’s singing with you, or how he chose you when he could have had anyone. That’s not the same as loving him and if you only love some of the parts, and not the whole well – then I think you both deserve better.”

Rachel swipes at her eyes and stares up at the dark ceiling above them. “He must be so angry with me right now.”

“If he has any sense he’ll be thanking you someday Rachel.”

“I – I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” Rachel admits tearfully. “I don’t know how I got here.”

“Well from the looks of your dress I’d say through the back fields, over Parker Hill and – did you cut through the new development near the elementary school or take the long way down Harrow?” Quinn jokes quietly.

Rachel laughs, even though doing so feels so incredibly wrong right now. “Cut through the new development. Those houses are going to be so tacky.”

Quinn lets out a low laugh and a moment later a warm hand curls loosely around Rachel’s fingers.

“We’re only seventeen,” Quinn murmurs. “None of us know what we’re doing.”

Rachel twists her hand until their fingers interlock. “You certainly seem like you know. You’ll probably be valedictorian and – and you’ll be in New Haven in the fall.”

Quinn tightens her grip a little. “Rachel, you’re going to be fine. You are the single most annoyingly resilient person I’ve ever met and that’s going to take you places the Neanderthals we go to school with can’t even dream of.”

Rachel takes an uneven breath. “You really think so?”

“Yeah,” Quinn says simply, “I do.” 

“Thank you,” Rachel says, running the sleeve of Quinn’s sweatshirt under her eyes, “for everything.”

“Well, what are friends for if not harboring runaway brides?”

Rachel smiles, in spite of everything. “So, we’re friends huh?”

“Kind of,” Quinn says dryly, before tossing Rachel’s hand away. “Go to sleep okay? We’ll figure everything out in the morning.”

Rachel takes a steadying breath before carefully settling on her side and pulling the covers up over her shoulders. She can just barely make out the line of Quinn’s profile in the dark, if she squints. As she watches her breathing even out she thinks about how someday Quinn will meet someone who will love more than just some small, inessential part of her. Who will understand that under a thick layer of armor lies a person who is so, so worth fighting to know. And maybe they’ll get married and maybe Rachel will be there to see Quinn walk down the aisle and - 

“Berry,” Quinn says abruptly, “I can feel you being weird from over here. Go to sleep.”

Rachel says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” before turning over and burying a grin into the pillows. 

Quinn hasn’t given her a piece of bad advice yet, so with one last glance over her shoulder, she closes her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> reposted from livejournal.


End file.
